Like empires of the past, the Communist Party of China is using language policy to ensure its hegemony By TENZIN TSULTRIM And KARMA TENZIN, Asiatimes.com, 16 October 2020 Transportation has played several different roles in the rise of civilizations and also in national defense. For instance, the efficient utilization of roads helped the Roman Empire rule the ancient world. The good network of…
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday announced the concurrent designation of Assistant Secretary Robert A. Destro of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor to serve as the United States Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues. The appointment of Mr. Destro gains significance in light of the upcoming November U.S. Presidential elections, with the country’s foreign policy with…
After China’s occupation of Tibet, religion in Tibet has gone through many transitions. The newly-established People’s Republic of China (1949) colonized Tibet and condemned Tibetan Buddhist practices and values. With the intensive indoctrination and increasing scrutinisation of Tibetan Buddhists, this article looks into how Tibetan female practitioners in particular suffer under the increasing state ‘sinicization’. And how the voices of…
According to PB Potter, the relationship between religion and state power in China has long been contested because religion was a significant source of resistance against authorities in the Imperial period and perceived as a potential source of threat to the present regime in China. The foreseeable threat that the Chinese leadership anticipates is not only because most of the…
The Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has convened its Seventh Tibet Work Forum for two days in Beijing from August 28 to 29. As the number suggest six forums have been previously held since the beginning of reform era. However, this doesn’t mean that no policy implementation organ of this sort has existed during the Party’s nascent…
He who holds Tibet dominates the Himalayan piedmont; he who dominates the Himalayan piedmont threatens the Indian subcontinent, and he who threatens the Indian subcontinent may well have all of South Asia within his reach, and with that, all of Asia – George Ginsburg and Michael Mathos Mao employed a strategic ingenuity in terms of looking at Tibet as the…
Yesterday on August 3, Ama Adhe breathed her last breath in Dharamsala. She was 88. Ama Adhe, known mostly for enduring twenty-seven years of her life in prison, represents the resistance and brutalization showcased and suffered by Tibetans of her time. Her story reflects the larger political question of Tibet and Tibetan people and the extended range of people who…
China’s dam-building threatens to choke off the flow of one of India’s most important rivers Both the 12th and 13th Five-Year Plans adopted by the Chinese State Council have called for large-scale expansion of hydropower projects in the southwest, including all three provinces of Tibet. The Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra River) is one of the main international rivers identified for hydropower expansion in Tibet. Jiacha…
In the run-upto to the 20th Party Congress expected to be convened in late 2022, the so-called Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) and other Tibetan areas witnessed a high-level leadership transfer/promotion. Yan Jin Hai (b.1962) has been transferred to TAR from Qinghai province (link in Chinese) and Ding Ye Xian has been transferred to Qinghai province from TAR (link in Chinese)….
With the U.S. State Department announcing its new visa restrictions on Tuesday against Chinese officials involved in restricting American citizens and officials from entering Tibetan areas, their disagreement on the Tibet issue has yet again captured the spotlight. The retaliatory move under the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act of 2018 is a part of recent wave of decisions by the…
For Tibetans-in-exile, WeChat has been a primary mode of communication with their loved ones inside Tibet. Recently, the Government of India’s Ministry of Electronic and Information Technology banned 59 Chinese apps including WeChat, TikTok, Mi Community and UC browser, saying that they are prejudicial to India’s sovereignty, integrity and national security. This one-of-a-kind blanket ban on Chinese technology companies comes in the…
As the Dalai Lama turns 85 this year, his dedication towards the environment has not dimmed in the slightest. “I was born in a small village called Taktser, in the northeast of Tibet, on the fifth day of the fifth month of the Wood Hog year of the Tibetan calendar, that is, in 1935,” writes the Dalai Lama in his…
China warned India that it will open new fronts in the Himalayas soon after the violent face-off took place between Chinese and Indian soldiers in Ladakh along the Indo-Tibetan border, which will cost heavy load for both India and China. At the height of coronavirus crisis in the world, all the media have focused on China’s military aggressions in Ladakh…
Chinese netizens have begun using images, and memes in particular, to spread information about the COVID outbreak. The novel coronavirus pandemic, which has spread beyond the borders of mainland China has brought the world to a screeching standstill, with the global infection count swelling to upwards of 9.5 million people having already left 4,85,740 dead. During the initial reports on the…
A Massive flood on 17 June, 2020 due to torrential rainfall in the last few days has affected many parts of Rongdrak County in eastern Tibet. The flood caused landslides as rivers gushed through the region, destroying homes, schools and monasteries located along the extremely narrow valley. There has been similar floods back 2017, coincidentally almost on the same day…